The Wave/Particle Duality - Part 2
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In the last video, I introduced the idea that really small things act sometimes like waves,and sometimes like particles.So how can we actually picture the wave-particle duality of, say, an electron?Well, imagine our electron is a speck of dust in a raindrop. We know pretty well where thespeck is, at first. But when the drop hits the ground, it'll spread out like a wave - andthe speck of dust will be somewhere in that wave. So the speck (our electron) is guidedby the wave - but there's still only one speck, and if you actually look for it, you'll onlyfind it in one place.The wave will also tell you how likely you are to find the speck at any one point – ifthe drop splits in two, you're more likely to find the speck wherever there's ...
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In the last video, I introduced the idea that really small things act sometimes like waves,and sometimes like particles.So how can we actually picture the wave-particle duality of, say, an electron?Well, imagine our electron is a speck of dust in a raindrop. We know pretty well where thespeck is, at first. But when the drop hits the ground, it'll spread out like a wave - andthe speck of dust will be somewhere in that wave. So the speck (our electron) is guidedby the wave - but there's still only one speck, and if you actually look for it, you'll onlyfind it in one place.The wave will also tell you how likely you are to find the speck at any one point – ifthe drop splits in two, you're more likely to find the speck wherever there's ...
